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His expression hardens.

His father taught him the opposite.

Protecting someone meant preventing consequences. It meant dismissing evidence brought in by a sixteen-year-old girl because your son was implicated. It meant driving a drunk friend home instead of arresting him. It meant deciding the people you loved were entitled to a different set of rules and calling that loyalty.

Casey threatened all of it.

“She told you about the recording,” I say.

Ian's gaze flicks away.

I don't need anything more than that. “She was going to turn it in.”

His attention snaps back to me. “She was going to ruin his life.”

The force behind the words makes my stomach clench.

“She wouldn't listen to me. I told her Scofield would get help. I told her my dad would handle it, but she kept saying that was the fucking problem. She had this tape and she thought she could blow up everyone's lives because she'd decided she knew better.”

“What did you do?”

For a moment, he doesn't answer. The river fills the silence instead, a constant rush through the trees outside. “I went to talk to her.”

“Here?”

His eyes move around the building as though he's seeing it seventeen years ago instead of now. “We used to hang out here after it closed. Everybody did. Nobody cared. She agreed to meet me.”

Because she trusted him.

“She brought the tape?”

“I thought she did.” His jaw flexes. “I told her to give it to me. That was it. I wasn't threatening her. I wasn't planning to hurt her. I just wanted the fucking tape.”

“But she wouldn't give it to you.”

“She wouldn't fucking listen.” His voice rises again. “She kept saying she made copies. That if anything happened to the original, it wouldn't matter. I told her nobody was going to do anything to her, but she just kept fucking talking about the state police, the newspaper, anyone who could do something about it.”

A familiar ache takes hold.

Casey had already learned that telling the right person meant nothing when the right person had decided not to hear you. She learned that from me.

“She freaked out. Started screaming at me, hitting me, telling me to let her go.” His words are coming faster now. “I was trying to get her to calm the fuck down, but she wouldn't. She just kept screaming.”

His gaze drifts toward the wall. An old wooden oar hangs there. The varnish has mostly peeled away, leaving gray wood exposed beneath it. “I only wanted her to stop.”

My mind supplies the mechanics with horrible efficiency. The weight of the oar. The arc required to swing it. Casey turning away from him. Bone beneath skin.

Ian swallows. “I hit her.”

The pain in the back of my skull seems to sharpen in response.

“Once,” he says quickly. “One fucking time. I didn't beat her. I didn't keep hitting her. I just swung it, and she⁠—”

His voice catches.

“She stumbled. There was loose gravel near the edge. She lost her footing.” He shakes his head, already rejecting whatever he sees in my face. “I tried to grab her.”

I have imagined almost every possible ending to her life. A stranger. A car. Someone taking her somewhere far enough away that we never found her. I have constructed possibilities so terrible that sometimes I couldn't sleep afterward.